Trying to convert VOB to iPod-h264

[haruki]

Okay, so I ripped my copy of Ghost World to my hard drive using MTR's title only extraction, selected the main feature and it spit out a single 5.5some GB VOB file.

I dropped this into ffmpegx 0.0.9x and set it up for the iPod-640w profile (1450 video bitrate, 128kbps AAC audio). Turned on two-pass encoding for more quality, and jacked the Qmin down a ways from 9. In any event, it's been working on this now for a few hours, and the progress indicator is now up to 318% with no indication it's going to stop. The info log for it isn't showing any errors or anything else particularly helpful either.

I've got a PowerBook G4 1.25GHz w/ 1.5GB of RAM, so I know it's not the fastest thing in the world, but I think there's something else weird going on here. Anyone have any suggestions?

[Case]

Extrapolating from a short test clip on my machine, I'd expect your encoding to take 15 hours.
Why do you set the bitrate so high? 800 kbps should be enough. ('Best' button in the calculator gives 791.) 1450 may be above the iPods maximum.
Two-pass encoding (your option) and Constant bitrate (iPod preset default) seems contradicting. There may not be much optimizing to do bitrate-wise, if the bitrate is the same during the whole movie. Your deviation also costs close to 6 hours, if my calculations hold.
The website mentions: If you use h264 (for an iPod preset): don't change [...] the encoding options. It would be a waste if your long wait resulted in an incompatible file, eh?

[rumplestiltskin]

The LC (640W) iPod encoding works just fine at the default "Q" settings. I do, however, bump up the ME function to multi-hexagon but this may simply be a force of habit from when I do the older, 320W iPod encoding. Even with the stock settings, the quality I get is superb. 700MB AVI's transcode down to about 350-450MB at virtually the same quality.